Those Girls Who Catch Lightning
by Aiko Isari
Summary: Forgetting and letting go is harder than it sounds. When the WIXOSS game comes back to her, Hanayo searches for the right answers. But searching can bring people together and take them apart. What does it really mean to become a LRIG? And have any of them ever stopped being one? A great, supernatural battle begins with wishes and memories alike.


**Chapter One – The Cards Are Back In Your Deck**

It was finally over.

Hanayo knew it the second she could open her eyes again. She knew it because her hands were now her own. She wiggled her fingers and coughed for air, able to breathe with her own lungs again. It was blissfully pain and for a moment, she had to remember that oxygen mask was no longer over her own face. It was nowhere near here. She could breathe. She didn't have to play around anymore.

She wanted to weep with joy.

"Hana?"

The thought passed in and out of her brain as she looked up. Her fingers touched her long hair and she smiled up at her friends. She didn't even remember their names now. She stroked her own short hair with wonder. It was softer than she remembered it being. How strange.

They were all still looking at her. It was strange. In the card, she was so easily ignored. That seemed like a dream now. Hanayo made herself smile. "I'm all right," she said, voice trembling a little. She looked at what was in her hands and almost swallowed her tongue.

WIXOSS cards. What a sweet, predictable irony.

"Paltea?" whispered the LRIG from beside her trembling knee. "What's happening? I feel strange."

Strange was the word for it. She was just back in her body and Yuzuki was in the hospital and-

Shouldn't she be there?

 _And do what, genius? Rush in like you did to save your friend and accomplish what, exactly?_

Hanayo let out a heavy breath, touching her brown hair. Then, with a decisiveness she hadn't had in a long time, she packed up her cards.

"I – sorry guys," she managed to say, hands trembling. "I, uh, just got a bit of a stomachache. I'm gonna head home."

She stuffed the cards, LRIG and all, away and Hanayo ran and ran and ran.

Did she deserve to see her? Did she deserve to know if she was okay when she was the one who put her there?

Hanayo ran and ran anyway, thinking of the wish she had tried to grant. She thought of soft black hair and hazel eyes. She remembered running her fingers through those locks in a ponytail, wanting to tug the tie out and let it fall carelessly to the bed and get knocked to the floor. She remembered the way his mouth felt, too yielding, too innocently yielding to her, a bit too ready to believe.

He had still looked at her in that heavy way, that love heavy way, even knowing she was a lie. Even while holding Yuzuki in his hands, he had…

Hanayo stopped running. She wasn't tired. That was something. Her body was well-taken care of. It was clumsy but well taken care of.

No, she was clumsy. She wasn't used to her limbs, her spindly limbs without the reinforced magic to take a simple blow or two. She wasn't prepared to walk on her own, for the lethargy of being stuck in a card then stuck in someone else could give you.

Hanayo brushed where Yuzuki's hair would have been. Then she swallowed and tried to remember her way home.

It took a while. But when she did and fumbled for her house key, Hanayo couldn't help but stand in her own doorway for a while until the tears rolled down her face and touched the tile.

With a great heaving breath and more resolve than she realized she had needed, Hanayo went to her room and did not come out.

* * *

The next day was a Tuesday. The next day, like she hadn't missed a good chunk of her own life, months, nearly a year of being in her own skin. She had to go back to school and catch herself up based on notes left behind in notebooks and stray text messages and a still meticulously kept schedule of work. The same thing that Peltea had encouraged in her that she had reluctantly done. Even though it hadn't felt like it had mattered, now she saw the appeal.

She was no more prepared today than she was yesterday, but of course, she couldn't be no matter how many times she tried. No matter how many hours of blissful sleep and shoving words in her brain could compare her for the weight of _not knowing anyone._

Well, no, it wasn't not knowing. It was not recognizing. It was like a decade had passed rather than a few months. Was it a few months? It felt like it.

Still, she knew how to put on a school uniform and how to eat. She knew how to chat meaninglessly with her parents after sneaking a peek at her various text messages in the morning. She still knew how to fake work hard at homework, thanks to Yuzuki.

Hanayo knew how to lie and cheat and manipulate now, and all because of a single, desperate wish. That was what Mayu had wanted.

Well, the weird girl had gotten it. She was just as filthy as the rest of the people she knew. She was a good selector.

Hanayo gripped the handle of her bag so hard her knuckles ached and forced herself to look where she was going. It was just school after all.

Would Yuzuki be going to school today? She doubted it. _Kazuki will take care of her, he always does…_

She rubbed her mouth with her free fist and hurried down. Her hair danced at her cheeks and she grimaced. Just imagining his fingers in her hair, stroking it, amber eyes full of fascination, like he's never seen it before. She jerked her hand away from it and sped up. Hanayo averted her eyes from how she looked, no longer caring.

 _I, really, really need to get it cut._

Nothing in her protested, though twin faces tried to imprint themselves upon her eyes as she squeezed them shut.

The game was over. Yuzuki should be fine. If she was back in her own body, it was only natural for that to be the case. And yet she wondered. She wanted to see for herself.

She stopped at the edge of the subway stairs. She looked down. "Would it be bad if I fell?" she wondered to herself.

Then Hanayo smacked her own cheeks in disgust. Where had that thought even _come from_ anyway?

She went to school.

* * *

The LRIG in its card did not move. Glassy eyes stared out at her, covered in plastic film.

Not that Hanayo expected her to move. It would have been nice though. Someone to talk to, someone who understood. She didn't even know if it was the same LRIG to begin with. It certainly wasn't Paltea. (Was that even her name? What was her real name?)

She set the card back in her bag. Nausea crept up her throat. Hanayo spat into the bathroom sink and went back to lunch.

 _It's not my problem anymore. It's my fault but not my problem._

Saying that kind of made it worse, thanks brain.

Her brain did not respond.

Hanayo exhaled through her teeth.

 _If it bothers you so much, go see her, you idiot._

Where would she even start?

* * *

Regret.

Anger.

Despair.

Adolescence.

Adolescence wasn't an emotion really, but it fit. It fit like the pieces of a puzzle were forced into line. It fit because everything else they ever did was a mistake anyhow. As far as everyone knew, adolescents were stupid. If you asked a certain person, she wouldn't disagree.

After all, she, like another spirit, was born from them. Born from the lost girls, the ones who were already dead, born from those living who hadn't lived enough, who didn't leave well enough alone. Born and dead and stuck in that place between card and field.

It was nice to be able to think of something past that but, well. There's work to be done.

And Satomi Kou is a truly shitty player.

He has the face of a little brother, charming and shy. He wears happy smiles and rips up napkins. He carries a picture of a dead boy in his wallet. Honestly. Classy.

He flinches every time she attacks someone, even when she does nothing at all.

She has no idea how long this will last. It will probably be eternity. Eternity trapped in a space the size of her rear end with a sparkling background. Eternity spent in a college boy's business bag and used for party favors and drunken outings.

Sometimes she tries coughing, break the duldrums.

It never works, but sometimes a girl looks over at that general direction. Kou gives them shy smiles and looks embarrassed to see them looking. Also intimidated.

The LRIG wants to throw up any internal organs if she has them.

* * *

She's not stalking anyone.

That's what Hanayo tells herself anyway.

It's not stalking that she happens to visit a friend living nearby. It's not stalking to see two sets of black hair. One's in a ponytail, the other a mess atop a slightly higher head and they're just walking together. That was all they were doing. Laughing, smiling. Like she hadn't woken up in a hospital, like nothing bad had happened to them ever. But it had.

Because of the ghost girl.

Because of her own feelings.

Hanayo followed them as carefully as she could muster. (For a moment, she forgot they had never seen her outside of the card, but it didn't matter. Did she really want to play it that way? Get caught? What would she even say?)

Her footsteps closed and a tall man bumped right into her back. She jumped and opened her mouth to speak, but he scurried on, brushing past people and clutching something in his hand. When she managed to clear her vision her quarries were across the street, talking at the red light.

Hanayo determinedly focused on the slope of Kazuki's chin, the dimples in his cheeks, the way his hands moved about whatever he was saying. Yet her eyes traveled to the other side. To where the bags under Yuzuki's eyes were long faded and everything was baby smooth and simply tan.

Hanayo turned away, bag swinging, and ran.

She didn't stop running until she saw the sight of the open barber shop and made sure to insist on it being cut as close to her neck as possible.

Her parents weren't pleased in the slightest. At least she hadn't said to buzz it all off, though the thought had been as tempting as releasing her pet hamster into the house.

Hanayo let them fret and worry. It was the least she could do, considering the situation that she had unwittingly placed them all into. It was nice that they were actually paying attention to her for once, even if it was only to make her feel worse. And it was something small, like her hair, rather than the fact that last night she had kept fidgeting loud enough to make her bed creak or things like that.

Rather that than them catching her burying WIXOSS cards anywhere that she tended to avoid.

Except the center LRIG. For whatever reason, she couldn't put that one away. Maybe it was the smile painted on. Maybe it was because of the childish whispering she had heard from it before the game had closed off entirely.

Maybe she just looked too much like Kana.

But what had even happened to Kana anyway? Since the end of the game?

Did it matter?

 _Yes. It has to._

It has to because it's not the two people she currently cherishes very much and thus will hurt a lot less.

* * *

 _ **A/N:** _ Ouch. My hands. Anyway, time for another long WIXOSS fic, to be alternated with Battle Girls, more than likely. Anyway, we're going to be incorporating all the canon that we know of at this point in the universe. In other words, whatever comes up in the next season, I may not put in. Not sure. ANyway, this is for Tomoe Mami, via commission fic. It's a long one XD Commissions are still open! Please check my site for details!

Challenges: Epic Masterclass (WIXOSS) Fanon theories, Diversity WritingCoMK19, and WIXOSS Non-Flash prompt -blood


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